The Doll that was Alive: the story of Japan’s Annabelle that shocked the entire country
June, 1978. It all began when Junji Inagawa, a scriptwriter for traditional Japanese plays, was working at a radio station, getting ready for the late-night broadcast when he heard someone crying hysterically. Heading out to investigate, he found one of the folklore singers sobbing and the director trying to comfort him. According to the singer, the radio station was broadcasting one of his early musical works when he heard a woman’s voice which he recognized as one of his fans - a female fan who had died a few months earlier. Shrugging the incident off as one of the many seemingly paranormal events that he had encountered numerous times throughout his career, Inagawa wrapped up his work at the studio and headed for home. Turns out the director who tried to comfort the singer was so freaked out that he wanted Inagawa to accompany him home as well. The duo hailed a taxi, got in, and all appeared to be normal until Inagawa noticed that a little girl clad in a red kimono kept appearing on the street every few blocks. A bit spooked out, Inagawa nevertheless tried to ignore her - until the taxi came to a stop at an intersection and the little ghost girl levitated into the air and headed directly towards him. The girl’s face was supposedly so dark and full of hatred - to the point that Inagawa was transfixed by the sight of her and was unable to scream. She passed through the car but did no harm to it’s passengers and soon vanished. Inagawa then noticed that the director and the taxi driver didn’t seem to notice the girl - he was the only person witnessing the entire event. That night, Inagawa’s wife, who had already gone to bed before Inagawa returned home, insisted that she heard loud footsteps for the whole night and asked whether Inagawa had brought a guest over to their house. The next day, Inagawa received a new project - a theatrical play about a ghostly legend that involved the use of props and special effects, including a doll as the female lead. Well, the doll looked exactly the same as the girl Inagawa saw that night. Down to the hairstyle, the facial expressions, the clothes that she wore. Needless to say, Inagawa was really creeped out at this point but still took over the project and prepare diligently for the play. Of note, the doll was incomplete when Inagawa first saw it, but the finished doll was soon sent to Mr. Maeno’s house. Maeno was a famous Japanese puppeteer and was hired specifically for the play. When Inagawa visited Maeno, however, he noticed that the doll’s right arm and legs were somehow twisted and broken. Maeno told him that they couldn’t be repaired no matter what they tried. Then began a series of unfortunate events that almost looked like the Japanese version of Tutankhamen’s curse. Soon after the doll was finished, the doll maker that built the doll in the first place vanished. The next day, the house that belonged to the scriptwriter who wrote the lines for the play was burned down entirely. During the first rehearsal, Inagawa and the others couldn’t even get the early draft for the script, but they still tried to practice nonetheless. Mr. Maeno, who was the puppeteer for the doll, was soon hit by a tragedy - his dear cousin died of unknown reasons. And it didn’t end there. During the rehearsals, there were loads of accidents, such as the bags and lockers containing the costumes being soaked with water, wigs catching fire for no reason at all, and many of the actors were wounded. All of those wounds occurred on the right hand and the right knee. Inagawa tried persuading the theater group to drop the project after seeing so many of his trusted employees getting hurt, but they nonetheless pressured him to continue. The day when the theatrical play was supposed to debut on stage at noon - the actors were suddenly unable to perform. Many of them were either unable to speak for some reason, as if their tongues were twisted together, or were paralyzed by a unknown force and unable to move around. The play was thus forced to rescheduled for the night. After the actors and other personnel were finally able to move again, Inagawa suggested visiting a few local temples and shrines to collect magical charms and other religious items to ward off whatever unknown evil influence that was interfering with their work. This sort of worked, as nothing too bad happened throughout the afternoon, and the play was finally able to debut on stage that night. Everything appeared to be normal until the last act, when the doll was to be placed inside a coffin. All of a sudden, without warning, the doll’s head, legs and arms came off and the stage was suddenly hit by a cold and misty fog. Inagawa knew he couldn’t just cancel the play as they were almost close to finishing it, so finish it they did. However, Mr. Maeno insisted they perform the play on stage a few times more, as it was a commercial success. The theater decided to do exactly, despite Inagawa’s harsh objections. Sadly, Inagawa’s father also died of unknown reasons the next day. After the events were finally over, the doll was given to Mr. Maeno who brought it home. A TV station caught wind of the incident and decided to interview Mr. Maeno on one of their late-night horror programs. Maeno brought the doll along, and this was when things began to go sideways - one of the overhead lights fell down with a crash, the curtains on stage were ripped off by some unknown force, and Mr. Maeno began acting strangely, initiating a conversation with the doll and treating it as if it were a real person. At this point, the workers off stage began to have a mental breakdown one by one, and many of them were wounded during the live broadcast - in short, the entire TV show became a clusterfucking clusterfuck, and barely managed to make it to the end. It was also said that many of the workers were so traumatized that they resigned after this incident. Another TV station situated in Tokyo also caught wind of the events and tried to make the incident that happened previously on live TV into a feature documentary show. They managed to find the lost doll maker, who was hiding in the mountain areas and sculpting Buddha statues, and tried to interview him. Again, there were a lot of weird accidents that happened during this period, and eventually the supposed interview never materialized. They found Inagawa though, and also interviewed him - until the cameras and projectors began to break down one by one and they were eventually forced to use a 16mm camera instead. As Inagawa cleared his throat and began to tell the story, they heard a knocking on the door, but there was nobody there. According to Inagawa, however, the TV station ran out of money to make the show, so they dropped the project altogether, although the 16mm film reel is said to be stashed somewhere in the company’s warehouses. Inagawa took the doll to a psychic, who initially refused to view the doll because she said she felt an extremely powerful evil presence emanating from it. She later agreed to do so after some persuasion, and when she set her eyes upon it, she informed an astounded Inagawa that the doll was possessed by more than one spirit - the most powerful of which was the daughter of a restaurant owner killed during a WWII bombing in Japan. She died of injuries on her right arm and leg. The psychic soon died of unknown reasons as well. After the psychic’s death, Inagawa got the doll back from her office, but was at a loss of what to do. He discussed the matter with Mr. Maeno, and both of them decided that sending the doll to a temple should be the best option. Inagawa got a professional photographer to help photograph the doll so he can show it to the priest at the temple. All was well until the photographer, who was developing the photos, ran out of the darkroom screaming. The photo wasn’t that of a doll. It was the little girl. Her face was sickly pale, her eyes were extremely thin and completely black, her eyebrows and nose looked artificial, and her lips seemed to smeared all over with bright, thick lipstick. And her hair - her hair was so long that it draped down to the floor. Mr. Maeno decided to keep the doll at home until he could find another temple willing to take the doll in, as they could do nothing at the present moment. However, it wasn’t too long when another very well-known TV station in Osaka approached Inagawa and Mr. Maeno and offered to feature this doll on one of their horror programs - again. Inagawa refused, but later accepted the offer anyway after many of his friends and former coworkers as well as Mr. Maeno persuaded him to do so. This would turn out to be the last time the doll made it to national television - and it was this incident that finally propelled it to fame. Inagawa and Maeno took a train to Osaka, where the TV show director met them at the station. On their way to the company headquarters, they took a detour to visit another psychic whom the director had invited to go on the show. Upon sensing the doll, however, the psychic told her guests that the doll was possessed by the spirit of a little girl, a powerful presence that she did not want to mess with. She then pointed to an empty corner nearby and told Inagawa that the little girl was right there, staring at them. When they entered the studio in the company’s headquarters, Inagawa kept hearing a spine-tingling “flute”-like humming sound that he originally thought was one of the special sound effects of the show. The sound soon became irritating as it suddenly spiked up in volume, and Inagawa went to the backstage to complain. The workers there, however, told Inagawa that they did not hear anything. At this point, the director rushed in and told them that the psychic could not come, as she had suddenly collapsed with a high fever and was now at the hospital. They immediately got a replacement, but when the second psychic arrived at the studio, his car was hit by a truck which shattered his ribcage and he too was rushed to the hospital as well. Finally, the third replacement arrived without incident, and the show was finally prepped up to start. It was broadcasted live, to the entire nation. As the cameras whirred to life, Inagawa noticed that someone was hiding behind the dark curtains as it began to sway from side to side. Eventually, he could even see the outline of a face on the curtains - as if someone was pressing his face against the curtain. Inagawa leaped up and drew back the curtains - and there was nobody there. The director motioned for Inagawa to come back and sit down. Facing the camera, Inagawa began to recount the tale of the haunted doll, as the TV host, the psychic and Mr. Maeno went on stage, with Maeno carrying the doll. As they sat down, the host asked the psychic whether he had sensed anything. The psychic promptly told Inagawa that there was little child sitting on his shoulder. At this very moment, phone calls began to swarm into the TV station. The show’s viewers had called the station and told them that they did indeed see a little child on Inagawa’s shoulder. The TV host and the director were confused as this was not what they had expected and definitely not part of the “special” horror effects they had prepared beforehand. “The doll is alive,” the psychic said. “And she is dark, evil, full of hate.” He then warned the audience downstage that they were in danger and hurriedly told them to move away from their seats at once. All of a sudden, one of the metal poles overhead crashed to the floor, and would have most likely impaled somebody had they ignored the psychic’s warnings and moved aside. And then - The other metal poles began to crash down, one by one. The director and the TV host just stood there, helpless, at a loss on what to do next. Several of the camera guys and the workers near the stage looked like they were about to hyperventilate and break down any moment. Many of the audience were also trembling and sobbing at the sight of what was happening. Just then, one of the workers rushed into the room and told the director that their cameras did indeed pick up the shadow of a child on Inagawa’s shoulder. The director angrily told him to show the footage on the screen - And there it was. The clear outline of what seemed to be a ghostly child, perched on Inagawa’s shoulder. Just to add fuel into the fire, the weird flute-like humming that Inagawa heard when he entered the studio returned and this time, everybody was able to hear it clearly. By now, the studio had already erupted into chaos, the director issuing orders to panicking workmen, and several of the audience members were desperately trying to leave. The show ended abruptly. “The Doll that was Alive” hit the newspapers the next day. The haunted doll gained national fame overnight by messing up one of the most watched horror TV shows in front of millions of audiences. It cemented the doll’s reputation as one of the famous horror legends in Japan - and in fact, the broadcasting industry in Japan still views the doll as a sort of taboo topic they don’t discuss in their shows. After the disaster that took place at the studio, Inagawa and Maeno headed for home. En route, they took a detour to visit one of Inagawa’s former colleagues, Mr. Taniguchi, who was now running a local inn in Nishiizu. They arrived at Nishiizu around midnight, which meant that there were no buses that could take them to the inn, so Mr. Taniguchi had to pick them up at the station. During the journey, Inagawa and Maeno noticed that there were several bright orbs outside the window that kept following the car and occasionally whizzing past by. They knew that the doll was obviously not done with them yet, so they said nothing and kept their heads low until they safely arrived at the inn. Taniguchi’s family had already gathered for a warm reception, but when Inagawa entered the inn, carrying the doll with him, he noticed that everyone suddenly fell silent. He was about to ask what was wrong, when he glanced at the doll and realized that the doll has changed its appearance. The eyes were bloated, the mouth was split/ripped apart on both sides to form a very, very wide grin, and the hair had changed color and was sticking out from all sides. It was no longer a doll - it looked more like a monster. And most of the people present in the room had watched the TV show fiasco a few days earlier, so they recognized the doll and knew what was wrong with it. The next day, much to Inagawa’s surprise, Mr. Taniguchi’s wife actually offered to enshrine the doll for them. She would also make a new set of kimono robes for the doll as she thought that the doll was too dirty. Shocked, but also kinda happy that he could get rid of the doll at last, Inagawa quickly agreed to the offer and the doll was left at Mr. Taniguchi’s house. As the entire paranormal shitshow was finally over, Inagawa and Mr. Maeno returned to their normal lives and continued to work on new projects and produce theatrical plays. One day, after one of the on-stage performances, Inagawa invited his crew for dinner to celebrate, but realized that Mr. Maeno did not show up. Mr. Maeno went on to go missing for three months, until he suddenly appeared in Inagawa’s home with no recollection of the events that happened during the time he was missing. He soon recovered from the memory loss, went on to build a successful career as a very well-known puppeteer in Japan. Things took a turn for the worst when Mr. Maeno was invited to perform abroad by a famous performance art troupe based in Eastern Europe; everyone was happy for Mr. Maeno as this was supposed to be the defining moment of his career. The night before Maeno was set to travel abroad, he phoned Inagawa and the two chatted happily for a brief while. The next day, however, Inagawa received news that Maeno’s house had caught fire - and he was burned alive. What’s more, the approximate time when the fired occurred was a few hours earlier before Maeno had phoned Inagawa for a chat. This means that Maeno was already dead when he was talking with Inagawa. Years later, after Maeno’s death, Mrs. Taniguchi wanted to visit Inagawa - to talk about the strange occurrences that she had experienced after keeping the doll. Inagawa initially refused as he had blamed the doll on Maeno’s death and wanted nothing to do with the doll again, but eventually relented. Mrs. Tanigichu told him that her 4-year old daughter began acting strangely in the night. She would wake up precisely at midnight and head to the room where the doll was being kept - and then talk to the doll for hours on end. Her parents tried to get her to go back to sleep, but she would violently resist and continue conversing with the doll. Surprisingly, even though the girl barely slept, she did not demonstrate symptoms of insomnia and remained relatively healthy. Mr. Taniguchi once asked her who she was talking to. The girl told him that she was talking to another little girl that, based on her descriptions, looked exactly like the ghost girl Inagawa had seen on the streets when it all began, years earlier. A few days later, the daughter suddenly told Mrs. Taniguchi that the doll wanted her. “She says she wants you.” “She wants you to be her new mommy.” “She thinks you are a good mommy because you care after her and make new clothes for her.” Mrs. Taniguchi was positively freaking out at that point and immediately took the doll to a nearby temple, basically shoving the doll in there and leaving the priests to figure out what to do with it. Inagawa phoned the temple and the priests confirmed that the doll was now under their care. At last, the doll was finally being properly enshrined in a temple where Inagawa hoped the evil spirits inside the doll would finally be at peace. But it wasn’t long after when the priests at the temple informed Mrs. Taniguchi that the doll had disappeared. Inagawa’s house was part of the apartment complex that also housed his own productions studio. He was already quite a successful actor and director when Mrs. Taniguchi visited him to tell the doll’s story, and now he found himself entangled with the doll again. Soon after Taniguchi’s visit and the doll’s disappearance, Inagawa began hearing weird footsteps and strange sounds in the dead silence of the night. He actually recorded these sounds to confirm that he wasn’t hallucinating. And then one night, when Inagawa was sleeping alone in his bedroom, he saw a shadow standing right outside his half-transparent sliding door. No one was in the house apart from himself and Inagawa knew that this shadow......definitely wasn’t that of a living person. Icy fear gripped his heart as he tried to calm himself and go back to sleep. The sliding door creaked as the dark figure began sliding it open. And he could see a face outside that sliding door. It was the doll. She had found him at last. Inagawa was on the verge of having a panic attack. Why did the doll find him again? What was the doll going to do? He briefly wondered if this was what Mr. Maeno saw during his final moments, before he was burned alive. Luckily the shadow disappeared and the doll seemingly left him - this time apparently for good. After this close encounter with the doll, Inagawa asked his company employees whether they had seen a similar figure before. And yes they did - the doll was apparently sighted a few times, lurking quietly in dark corners, and instantly vanishing after somebody tried to get a good look at it. The sightings stopped after the doll visited Inagawa. Later, some guy from a publishing group asked Inagawa to record his story of the doll on tape, also incorporating segments from the messed-up TV shows as well as the strange sounds Inagawa recorded at night. The tapes were sold for about a week, but buyers began to complain of strange occurrences that happened to them after purchasing those tapes. Also, if somebody tried rewinding those tapes, the tapes would start smoking and then break apart. The tapes quickly went off the shelf. In 1986, another TV show invited Inagawa on set to tell the doll’s story again. This time, the doll wasn’t brought on stage as it had already vanished a few years earlier, so Inagawa brought a replica doll that resembled the original one and displayed it on live TV. However, the broadcast was still plagued with paranormal phenomenon - the temperature in the room would drop a few degrees, the shadow of a little girl kept appearing and disappearing on the camera’s periphery, Inagawa’s watch suddenly shattered for no reason, and an unknown person’s voice was heard to tell the camera to point towards eleven o’clock. From then on, it became some sort of unspoken rule in the broadcasting industry that TV shows were not allowed to discuss the doll. In 1999, Inagawa met with Taniguchi’s daughter again. For some reason, the daughter had established some kind of psychic connection with the doll, and knew where the doll was. He told Inagawa that the doll was now in the innermost room of an abandoned Japanese house somewhere in the mountains. She also told Inagawa that the doll was waiting for him, and that they would meet again someday. When Inagawa asked her where the doll would meet him, she drew a picture of a stage, with cameras and lighting and props. The stage was exactly the same one where Inagawa and his crew performed the theatrical play with the doll back then. Category:Fanfic Category:Creepypasta